ANNALS COMMENTARY ANNALS COMMENTARY intellectual commerce-legal paradigms for global initiatives Human intellect is the genesis of the proud civilizations, where it carried out its collective march towards a 'better tomorrow'. The creative manifestations of the great intellects brought all of us from dark and dingy grottos to the luminous urbanity of the present day. For every small step forwar...

The World Health Organization has been involved in a wide range of global healthcare initiatives for many years. Recently an initiative 'Safe Surgery Saves Lives' has been launched to improve the safety of surgery throughout the world. Safe anaesthesia is a key component to achieving this aim.

HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURES ARE A MAJOR CONcern of governments in Canada and the United States. Over the past 40 years, a variety of approaches have been used to control costs, including global budgeting, managed competition, cost sharing, and pay for performance. Policy makers recognize that physicians play a central role, with some estimates suggesting that physicians control 80% of health expen...

Health-care records are evolving as the rationale for their automation becomes ever more persuasive. Promoting that evolution are local and wide-area networking as they demonstrate that computer-based medical and health records will be more than mere electronic versions of the traditional paper record. System integration has emerged as a key element in the reinvention of environments for patien...

The content and landscape of global child health is increasingly complex. There is strong evidence for the effectiveness of local, national and institutional leadership in reducing child mortality, but this has not been a focus of global health initiatives. Interventions to strengthen health systems should include support for local leadership: building-up institutions of training, empowering na...

BACKGROUND Networks are increasingly regarded as essential in health research aimed at influencing practice and policies. Less research has focused on the role networking can play in researchers' careers and its broader impacts on capacity strengthening in health research. We used the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (CCGHR) annual Summer Institute for New Global Health Researchers...

background recognizing the importance of having a broad exploration of how cultural perspectives may shape thinking about ethical considerations, the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) funded four regional meetings in africa, asia, latin america, and the eastern mediterranean to explore these perspectives relevant to pandemic influenza preparedness and response. the meetings were ...

BACKGROUND There is widespread agreement on the need for scaling up in the health sector to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But many countries are not on track to reach the MDG targets. The dominant approach used by global health initiatives promotes uniform interventions and targets, assuming that specific technical interventions tested in one country can be replicated across ...